Posted By richards on January 8, 2013
Lauren Victoria Burke / AP
Chuck Hagel delivers remarks to the Brookings Institution on U.S. foreign policy and the 2008 presidential campaign in Washington on June 26, 2008.
Jeff Goldberg has an interesting post about the mixed feelings that the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) may have about launching a major lobbying campaign against Chuck Hagel.
He may be rightand it would be wonderful if truebut I know that AIPAC has been quietly working the phones, arguing against the nomination. There is a difference between that and a full-bore lobbying campaign, but AIPACs pro-Netanyahu posture has always been clear. (Update: Eli Lake, who knows this territory well, is also reporting that AIPAC will stand down.)
While on this subject, I should note, with sadness, that Ed Kocha great mayor of New York and one of the most clever politicians Ive ever coveredhas gone off the high board on the Hagel nomination. There is much that is odious about Kochs statement, but the idea that the President has betrayed Israel by nominating Hagel is the most outrageous.
(MORE: Hagel: A Different Kind of Defense Secretary)
These notions of betrayal and appeasement (pace Bill Kristol), perfumed with intimations of anti-Semitism are part of a hyperbolic corruption of common usage, favored by neoconservatives and their extremist allies. Can Nazi metaphors be far behind? Oh, wait a minute: the idea that negotiating with Iran constitutes appeasement, as Kristol has harangued, is a direct reference to Neville Chamberlains catastrophic cave to Hitler in the 1930s.
This sort of thinking pre-supposes two false premises: that Jews are as weak and helpless as they were in Nazi Germany, and that the dreadful regime in Iran has the strength and imperial hunger of the Nazis. The truth is, Israel is the most powerful country in the region, by far. It has a nuclear arsenal. It has a powerful military and a nonpareil intelligence service. Iran, by contrast, is near economic collapse as a result of the global economic sanctions organized byyesBarack Obama. Its nuclear program is constantly sabotaged by computer viruses launched by a joint effort of Israels intelligence services andyesthe Obama Administration. Is this what Ed Koch means by betrayal?
There is no question that Irans government is a disgrace, but not because its powerless president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, goes about denying the holocaust and threatening Israel with elimination. It is a disgrace in the same way that the other police state dictatorships in the regionthe Assads, Mubaraks and Saddamswere disgraceful. The patina of religiosity cloaks a military dictatorship run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is brutal and dangerous, but eminently containable.
(MORE: The Hagel Choice)
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The Israel Lobby and the Fight Against Chuck Hagel
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